What's the status on this? I may be interested in playing some.

theres about 10 folks or so at different points in the game. some in a2, others in a1, some in a5.

Oh shit.

in hell a2 with a healer, smiter, mentalsin and meteor sorc. i was expecting more of a challenge, given that we dont even have a summoner with us. i'm definitely starting to believe hp buffs need to go to the chopping block if a future patch happens.

Scratch the healer.

rip deathnova(healer) to dk charger minion. there was only 1 left too!

map awareness>hp buffs

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on a more serious note, I'm starting to think this crusade is proving that juvs are actually more of the problem than hp. As long as you have enough life/mitigation to not get 1 shot, and a lot of juvs + decent reactions, you can tank anything indefinitely by juving every time you take damage.

My guess is that unless one of you takes an unlucky amp+confuse nado at darkness, if you guys get passed meph you will do everything up until samy, los, and sm, because 6k life is simply not enough to tank them imo.

i actually like drrod's idea from the other thread, making juvs less effective like 10 or 20% as an easy fix

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i think a better idea is to remove the juvs

I was thinking the same thing before slappy. The juvs just replace the life buffs... you just need more of them. But as long as you can handle a hit or two and have enough juvs, you can stay alive. But I'm in the same boat as pious: you have to remove them outright. Now I think that may bring on a lot more created healer pallies and summoners, but at the very least, removal of the juvs will create more of a need to focus on strategy, party synergy, and gearing for defense rather than complete damage. If anything, I'd remove the juvs before removing the hp buffs, although those could very easily be chopped in half (at least).

In terms of progress:

I have hit nightmare A2 going solo from A4 normal on. I have been rolling between 2 characters and bringing a 3rd along: mentalsin, fire trapper, es light sorc (which i started leveling after I hit nightmare).

- Mentalsin is mainly for bosses, as it's only a 40 point build and the tab makes for a strong fade/clawblock/shadow master, as well as not having counters with psychic hammer. Not very good with trash (mind blast converts too often, for too long, not enough aoe, not enough damage, no physical pierce available except amp which isnt enough, mana-costly). It's a matter of gearing for the bosses to mitigate damage, and with much smaller HP pools, red potions become a lot more useful. There are some very shitty gear options for weapons though on this character (runewords are good but good luck finding the runes for the appropriate level - I will be making a suggestion for a fix on runes. Finding level 40 and 50 runes when youre hitting level 80+ is so stupid).
- Fire trapper and light sorc are for trash and maybe some bosses that the mindsin cannot handle. The gear options here are better.

As mentioned before, it's about mitigating the damage you take, taking your time to run around, dodge attacks, cast when you can etc. The battles are longer but not really more difficult... it's about gear and potion preparation. A lot of times people just don't bring enough rejuvenation/health/mana potions and say "this is too hard to progress without a party or better gear," but most of the time its all available to you (runes/runewords excluded).

As a result of the experience so far, I would like to see juvs removed, hp buff skills reduced by 50%, and reds buffed a lot, like double for barbs and dins, tripled for everyone else. Reds are so bad on druids it's not even funny.

the only problem i see about removing juvs is having no way of dealing with big spikes of damage (there are a lot of them in hu)

we could add another form of mitigation. Like a Fire Retardant Potion that temporarily increases your max fire sorb or res and is on maybe a minute cooldown, so if you get caged+firestorm+lightning hosed at diablo you have an option besides die or s/e, for example

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we hit hell a4 but to be honest i've been rather disappointed with the push. i was hoping for more of a challenge from not having hp buffs. so far none of the bosses we've fought was really that hard. nm baal was a longer fight that the rest but not terribly difficult.